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School Panel Draws Fire: Questioned About Microsoft School, All-Boys Charter

Posted on: Thursday, 12 January 2006, 18:00 CST

By Mensah M. Dean, Philadelphia Daily News

Jan. 12--Philadelphia school officials yesterday heard stern opposition to a proposal to open an all-boys charter school, and over how they plan to enroll students at a Microsoft-backed "school of the future."

School officials said 75 percent of the Microsoft school's students would come from the West Philadelphia area surrounding the school and the remainder from the rest of the city. Nearly 1,500 students have applied for the lottery for the 170 freshman seats the school will have available in the fall.

Rev. Arthur White, of the East Parkside Residents Association, said at least 25 percent of those children should come from East Parkside because the school is located there.

During yesterday's School Reform Commission meeting, he complained that school officials over the last year had misled East Parkside residents to believe they would receive an enrollment set-aside. In fact, he learned, the officials were referring to a much larger portion of West Philadelphia.

"We don't know what to tell our children in East Parkside about whether or not it is certain that they will attend the high school in the neighborhood," he said.

The school district's chief executive, Paul Vallas, said any changes to enrollment policy would be made by the 23-member committee that has been advising the district on the school's development.

The reform commission is not expected to vote on the proposed Southwest Philadelphia Academy for Boys until next month. Commission members, however, spoke highly of single-sex schools and appeared to be leaning toward approving the charter proposal.

"What we have been doing has not been working," said Commissioner Sandra Dungee Glenn, a graduate of Girls High School. "I have a very open mind about trying some things that we may not have tried, especially if there is some evidence that it could be more beneficial to our students."

Lined up against the proposal are the Women's Law Project, the Education Law Center, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The failure of existing schools adversely affects girls to the same extent that it applies to boys," testified Terry L. Fromson, managing attorney for the Women's Law Project. "No research exists that could be considered persuasive basis to justify sex segregation as a means for achieving male student achievement."

Fromson alleged that, if approved, the charter school would violate multiple federal and state laws, and noted that in 1991 the courts rejected the Detroit school board's bid to create three male-only academies based on the prohibition against sex discrimination in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.

When Commissioner Daniel Whelan quizzed her as to whether Girls High is unconstitutional, she maintained that the school is de facto all-girls, but "is not restrictive to girls."

David Hardy, who submitted the charter proposal and would serve as the school's CEO, said single-sex schools are legal and needed. He said that if the boys' school is approved, he and his backers would next like to open a girls-only charter school.

"For a lot of students, taking the pressure of this male-female interaction out of the picture allows them to do things that they would not do in a coeducational setting," Hardy said. "You see much more of a commitment to the arts, more academic rigor and less violence and macho posturing in an all-male setting than you would see in a coed setting," he added.

The school would open in the fall to 125 ninth-graders. Tentative plans call for locating the school in an existing building at 41st Street and Chester Avenue, Hardy said.

Commission Chairman James Nevels said that although he supports single-sex schools, the legality of a single-sex charter school would be investigated before a decision is made.

He noted that the district already operates single-sex schools. Besides Girls High, FitzSimons High is all boys, Rhodes High is all girls and Pepper Middle School has separate classes for boys and girls. Victory Schools, a New York-based for-profit company, is under contract with the district to manage all three schools.

In 2004 the U.S. Department of Education published regulations governing single-sex education in public schools, essentially making it easier for school districts to create them.

The Web site of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education states that the regulations free single-sex schools from having to provide any rationale for their format and from having to conduct periodic reviews to determine whether single-sex education is necessary to remedy inequities. Such schools do have to offer equal courses at other schools within the same school district, according to the association. Charter schools, it said, are exempt from all three requirements.

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Source: The Philadelphia Daily News

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